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Last night, hundreds of teenagers and women descended on White Hall as part of the #FreePeriods protest.

Dressed in red and holding banners any art college would be proud of, gangs of gal pals rocked up to demand that girls who receive free school meals also be given free sanitary products.

If parliament listens, that’s 208,000 girls who’ll be eligible for free tampons and towels. And if that sounds like a lot, it is; according to Plan International UK, 1 in 10 girls can’t afford to buy menstrual products.

We’re talking about a huge number of young women who are having to stuff their knickers with socks or tape tissues to their tights once a month.

And in a supposedly ‘developed’ country, that isn’t acceptable.

Grace Campbell is a filmmaker and co-founder of the Pink Protest who helped to organise the #FreePeriods event alongside 18-year-old Amika George.

‘Scarlett and I started the Pink Protest, which is a platform and collective for female activism. We interviewed Amika for a series of films we were doing for TPP, and she told us about the campaign and then we were like, we gotta work on this,’ Grace tells Metro.co.uk.

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‘So we’ve been helping her since then. We decided to organise a protest, and it was very grassroots and there was a big WhatsApp group of women and that’s how we got it all done.’

And what of the crowd last night?

‘The vibe was youthful, and I adored that. Looking around a crowd and seeing hundreds of secondary school girls who had made banners, and had come straight from school because they wanted to come and engage in this direct action, it was emotional and inspiring, and it gives me hope for the next generation of activists.’

Next on the #FreePeriods agenda, Grace says, is getting Justine Greening (Secretary of State for Education) and Philip Hammond to sit down with Amika and the Pink Protest women to work out how best to go about ending youth period poverty.

‘It’s not much of an ask, if you think about how much money they’re throwing away on Brexit negotiations, it’s a minuscule amount, we estimated it would cost £4.78million a year.’

To get an idea of how many women deeply care about this issue, just have a quick scroll through the #FreePeriod hashtag on Twitter and Instagram.

There are over 4,000 photos uploaded under the hashtag on Instagram, for example:

(Picture: Instagram)

And last night, Whitehall was basically just a sea of feminist activism

A post shared by Phoebe (@phoebeh.carter) on Dec 20, 2017 at 3:03pm PST

Teenagers came out to fight for their peers’ rights to not have to miss school for fear of free bleeding.

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Men came to support their girlfriends, mates and wives. Women came to show that this is a problem for women of all ages – whether it’s homeless women, those in shelters, broke students, or those on benefits.

No woman should have to choose between remaining hygienic during their period and having a meal. This isn’t the 1800s anymore – we can’t allow 10% of our young female population to live in fear once a month.

Anouszka Tate and Frankie Wells are the founders of podcast Project Pleasure, and they’ve been championing this cause for some time.

We spoke to them about period shaming and what the #FreePeriods campaign means to them as women in their late 20s:

A post shared by #miRUNda (@mirandalarbi) on Dec 21, 2017 at 3:54am PST

Why do you guys feel so passionate about the #FreePeriods campaign?

Anouszka: So I actually had an IUS (similar to an IUD) fitted years ago to stop my periods. They were taking over my life. As a teen I ended up in hospital a number of times because the pain was so bad. I was regularly missing significant chunks of school and uni because I was so faint I couldn’t get out of bed. Luckily for me I was surrounded by enough period-positivity and understanding that I didn’t let it destroy my education entirely, but the thought of other young girls not only going through something similar – through no fault of their own – but also having no one to confide in because they’re that ashamed breaks my heart.

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I’m so fiercely passionate about making sure women reach their potential and hold the highest positions of power around the world …if girls are skipping school because they’ve been told to be ashamed of menstruating, they’re missing out on full education. That has a knock-on effect on the make up of our workplaces. Tackling period poverty isn’t an isolated event, it’ll send tidal waves of change throughout society.

(Picture: Ben Katzler for Metro.co.uk)

There’s still a massive stigma around periods – how has your relationship with periods and talking about it changed since your first period?

Anouszka: I started my periods super early; I was nine. I recount a story on the show about how when it was sweltering hot at primary school once I couldn’t work out if my period was leaking or if I was just massively sweating my ass off. Not only was I physically horribly uncomfortable, but more than that I didn’t know who to tell or what to do because no teacher or person in any position of authority had ever spoken to me about periods, so I genuinely didn’t even know if they would know they existed. I thought I might be the only one on the planet experiencing this madness.

I very quickly became a confident young teen though thanks to the brilliantly open environment my parents created at home, so periods, naked bodies, sex, the whole lot – they’re so normal to me that I’ll talk about them in a really matter of fact way, no hint of embarrassment. I do hope that rubs off on other people so that one day we won’t giggle or gag at – heaven forbid – the sight of a spot of period blood on an advert that’s sat right next to an ad for a violent bloody video game…

Frankie: I had the opposite journey to Anouszka. When I got my first period I was so excited – the pride I felt! It was a big part of forming my femininity and identity as a woman…but I didn’t really know what to do so I stole some towels from my mum’s room. It’s weird that I felt so proud at the time because it’s not so clear cut now. Sometimes I’ll go to the shop and try desperately to hide my tampons under other groceries. Other days I’ll choose the male cashier and slam my tampons down on the counter like ‘YEAH I’M MENSTRUATING WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO?!’

A post shared by The Other Box (@_theotherbox) on Dec 21, 2017 at 3:25am PST

Have you noticed a change in other people’s attitudes, especially in men?

Frankie: Men still don’t know what to do when I come into work with terrible period pains. They’ll suddenly remember other jobs that they had to go and do immediately, or just go bright red.

Anouszka: For men though I don’t think it’s ever come from the same deep sense of shame, secrecy and a need to be discreet that dictates the attitudes of those who do menstruate. It’s more that they have no concept of it whatsoever so it’s easier not to engage in conversation. We talk about that idea on the show – that a lot of the time it’s women ridiculing women for menstruating because we’ve only ever been given negative language to use in conversation with each other.

Frankie: In fact, we talk about period sex and how we’ll often put our shame on male partners before they’ve even said anything about it. Most of the time they’re actually pretty chilled about it!

(Picture: Ben Katzler for Metro.co.uk)

Anouszka: Those who don’t menstruate need to be involved in this conversation just as much as anyone else. They make up the vast majority of positions of power, they’re the ones dictating our relationships with our bodies and periods, so it’s vital they understand the nuances of our experiences. We’ve had great feedback from men who’ve listened to our periods episode – I do think they’re genuinely interested in engaging if only someone would just bloody well talk to them about it! It’s about picking the right method of communication too though – our guest, American actress Liliana Tandon, has created a hilarious web series about women in different periods of history getting their period, and she’s noted how much comedy has helped men feel able to involve themselves in the narrative.